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Recommend a 2TB HDD for RAID-1 External storage

TangoJuliet

TangoJuliet

Diamond Member
I currently have this external Firewire 800 for storage:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/raid_1/Gmax

I am using (2) 1TB Seagate in there but only have something like 60GB left in storage. Can somebody recommend a good 2TB drive to replace my 1TBs? If there aren't any good 2TBs out there then I guess a 1.5TB would be ok but if the 2TB is only a couple bucks more then I'd rather go with the more capacity.

Right now Newegg has a couple good deals going on:

HITACHI Deskstar HD32000 IDK/7K 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5"
$129 AFTER MIR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822145276

Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS 2TB 5900 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5"
$139 (No Rebate)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148413&ref=dynamitedata.com
 
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Blain said:
WD 2TB "Green"
Click to expand...

I don't keep the external drive on all the time so power consumption isn't a big deal for me. Right now the Seagate's are low power and when I leave the external device on for a long period I constantly hear the drives powering up which is a little on the annoying side.

Not really any good prices on the WD yet as they are $199
 
Blain said:
Sorry, I thought you were asking for recommendations.
Click to expand...

I am but I'm also trying to look for a good deal as well. I replied saying I don't necessarily need a "green" drive for my use and was seeing if there was another alternative.
 
The WD Black has a longer warranty period and WD has a better reputation for quality.

Seagate had HDs not long ago that would brick without warning and the Hitachi has the "Deathstar" debacle to live down.
WD has no such skeletons in it's closet.

Oops, I almost forgot...
My wife has WD stock in her IRA account. :sneaky:
 
Of course they did. They weren't the ones who screwed up, though. If there were no more "Deathstars" since they bought IBM's harddisk dvision, wouldn't it be reason to believe they've done better at avoiding mistakes such as those committed by IBM with regards to the "Deathstar" debacle?
 
And tell me a major failure of "Hitachi", not the "Deskstar" brand that they retained.

I'm not arguing that Hitachi is better than WD. I am not an expert, in fact a recent thread of mine was about asking opinions for a reliable 1TB HD. And WD does seem to be a great brand, and I pretty much am convinced about WD being the #1 choice so far.

I am just asking here what went wrong with Hitachi, because when I tried to do some searching, the "failure" was committed by IBM, for some reason about using new or unproven tech or whatever. The reason escapes me, and I'm not quite interested in it. But it was IBM, not Hitachi.

Now if you mean "it's just a branding difference, and all the technology, R&D resources, and even the managers and rank and file were 100% left the same, and only the IBM logo was changed to Hitachi", then maybe concern over Hitachi is reasonable. But as it is, you are not giving any solid reasons, all you said is "they bought the legacy", which pretty much means nothing until you mention another similar failure that repeated in Hitachi's time, or you know that they made absolutely no changes in the production or management or QA or R&D or anywhere else. Or if, like Seagate, their failure rates seem to be incredibly high. Those would be reasons for concern.

I'm not after Hitachi's "good name" being cleared. I don't care about Hitachi, I'm just here trying to learn more information about HD vendors, And if Hitachi is a bad brand, I'd want to know about it, just as I appreciated knowing about Seagate's failure rates.
 
So Newegg has the WD 2TB green drives for $140/each. Best price I've seen on those drives so far. I read some of the newegg reviews and someone had posted that these drives are not intended for RAID. Any truth to that? I do plan on running these in a RAID-1 external drive (link in the original message).
 
Thanks for all the literature guys. After reading that and most of the reviews on newegg about the WD drives and RAID it has made me a little hesitant.

However, my current drives (Seagate 1TB 7200.11) are in RAID-1 and have worked flawlessly and those particular drives were known to have issues so I'm not sure if I should be so worried.

The main difference between what most users are posting is that the RAID is being done directly on their machine and being handled by the MB's controllers. My situation is a little different as it is an external drive and it has its own board and controllers specifically for RAID.

I just sold both of my 1TB drives so I need to buy the 2TBs soon. More then likely I will be buying the WD drives today from the egg unless you guys change my mind.
 
I dunno, every time I hear someone has a drive that isnt working and it's clicking or something...it is almost always a Hitachi.

I have a mixture of Seagates, WD's, and Samsungs now, and all have been great. Even my two 1.5tb Seagates in a mirrored FreeNAS box. I do have that box power down the drives when not in use (most of the time). The Seagates are pretty loud when spinning up initially, but other than I've had nothing but good luck with them.

I'm not sold on these "green" models yet...seems like a lot of issues.
 
TangoJuliet said:
The blacks on sale too?
Click to expand...
Oh, I don't know. I'm not from NY or the US at all. But just like you, I was shopping around for some HDs and asked around this forum first, and got the impression that WD Blacks were a great choice.

BTA said:
I have a mixture of Seagates, WD's, and Samsungs now, and all have been great. Even my two 1.5tb Seagates in a mirrored FreeNAS box. I do have that box power down the drives when not in use (most of the time). The Seagates are pretty loud when spinning up initially, but other than I've had nothing but good luck with them.
Click to expand...
My older brother also has a good Seagate. It's a 120GB HD that's already five years old. I sensed a lot of hate for Seagate around here though, seems their newer ones have been failing a lot?

Then again, in a world-wide forum, you can expect that personal experiences would vary wildly.
 
I have had great luck with WD Black as well.

However, since no one else seems to want to mention this...get the Enterprise class drive for a RAID array. Do not use "green" drives or even the Black ones. Why? Because they are not made for a RAID environment and can/may drop out and cause issues with the RAID array.

They cost more...but if you really want/need a RAID array...then you pay.

Another option would be to get two normal drives and use a program like Syncback to mirror the two drives. I have had good luck with that too. Remember that data CAN still be lost in a RAID 1 environment with a controller failure, etc.

HTH...

Adam
 
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